On 4/22/16, jd1008 <jd1008(a)gmail.com> wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/microsoft_open_source_practice/
Microsoft headhunters seek Linux folk for secret open source unit
Recruiters target penguinistas for Azure sales joy
Since when Microsoft cares about the legality of its acts? They
certainly grew to its current position thinking Antutrust law did not
exist -or if existed, thinking it did not apply to them-.
*sarcasm*
Reminds me of
"The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer."
from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissinger_cables
BTW: taking open source software and turning it into a "cloud service"
where you incidentally remove the ability of people using it modifying
-and even more important, even looking at the source code, effectively
turning former FOSS into a black box "service" is nothing new. H*ck,
Google even lifted entire portions of the
OpenOffice.org spreadsheets
documentation and used it for the GDocs spreadsheets functions
"on-line manual". Good luck finding the GDocs source they run on their
servers... much less tweaking it
I've long said that Cloud Computing is "the fine art of separating
people from their software.
So, in this Brave New World of "SAAS" (software as a service) we risk
going full circle back to the days of the mainframe with dumb
terminals (which now will be a lot less dumb and browser-centered),
and the source code of the apps we run being locked and running inside
the "mainframe room" by the secretive IT guys. Now that room is "the
cloud".
Case in point: IBM had a couple decades ago, IBM Voicetype and then
IBM Viavoice dictation software. Now IBM offers you voice recognition
as a service on thier "cloud". They are free to bill you per usage (or
not) as they please, you can't even choose to run Viavoice on your PC
anymore (they long ago sold rights of the desktop version to their
main competitor, Nuance, so that dead product has no future or further
development, it's their cloud based service what they're trumpeting
now).
Yes, I know the concept of the private cloud and that some orgs will
prefer to have the source of what they run insde their own little
clouds (20 yrs ago it was called "the intranet" and client-server
instead of browser->SAAS), but that's not what the big corps are
aiming at. They are aiming at turning APIs into "SAAS APIs". Whereas
the cloud only offers you an entry point and spits back the
data/result you want, provided you provide your developer ID key at
the beginning of the transaction. Congratulations, you've just handled
over the PIN of your bank account and enslaved yourself in the
process.
But, gee, fighting this is not worth it. It's a lost battle. Today's
20-something and newer generations just love to own nothing and pay
thru the nose for "subscriptions" to everything,from digital radio to
music streaming.... services which were previously "free" to listen
forever if you purchased physical media or a FM receiver.
Back to the point, yes, it is legal. Convenient? maybe, initially.
Desirable, hell no, IMHO.
But WTF do I know...
FC
--
During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary
act
Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto
Revolucionario
- George Orwell